The commercial determinants of health are in focus this week – from the harmful business model of Meta, to a range of other dangerous and extractive industries.
We also bring the latest news in global health, lessons from COVID in Canada and the UK, snippets from various conferences, and recommended reading on bridging the dental divide.
The quotable?
It’s time for the Federal Government to make the system changes and introduce the financial incentives across both the public and private sectors that will push medicine and dentistry into a partnership to improve health and health outcomes for all Australians, starting with those most affected by poor dental and oral health.”
Global health
Amnesty International report has released a damning investigation of Meta’s role in fuelling hatred, violence and human rights abuses against Tigrayans in Ethiopia, where Facebook is the most popular social media platform. The 74-page report blames Meta’s business model, “which is predicated on harvesting, analysing and profiting from people’s data, and privileges ‘engagement’ at all costs”.
“This business model relies on incentivising people to stay on the platform for as long as possible in order to collect ever-more data on them for the purpose of targeted advertising. In furtherance of this aim, Meta’s content-shaping algorithms are tuned to maximise engagement, and to boost content that is often inflammatory, harmful and divisive, as this is what tends to garner the most attention from users.
“In the context of the northern Ethiopia conflict, these algorithms fuelled devastating human rights impacts, amplifying content targeting the Tigrayan community across Facebook, Ethiopia’s most popular social media platform – including content which advocated hatred and incited violence, hostility and discrimination.
“Ethiopian journalists and researchers also flagged a tide of hate directed at them on Facebook, simply for doing their job of documenting and reporting on the armed conflict.”
Read the study, The impact of UN high-level meetings on non-communicable disease funding and policy implementation: “Despite their high profile in the global health architecture, there is scant evidence that these meetings influence financing or domestic policy implementation without attendant work from countries, UN agencies and civil society.”
See the WHO guidelines on lead poisoning 
See the Standing Rock petition 
Read: Storytelling That Drives Bold Change
COVID updates
Consultations
#AusPol
Read: The dental divide. Dr Lesley Russell concludes the article:
It’s time for the Federal Government to make the system changes and introduce the financial incentives across both the public and private sectors that will push medicine and dentistry into a partnership to improve health and health outcomes for all Australians, starting with those most affected by poor dental and oral health.”
Read: The Chief Public Health Officer of Canada’s Report on the State of Public Health in Canada 2023.
It says:
“The COVID-19 pandemic showed us that we have to do better. We saw the inequitable impacts. We listened and learned about the barriers faced by communities and how we can effectively address them. We achieved more when we worked across sectors to bring our collective expertise and tools to the table and supported trusted community organisations to reach diverse populations.
“Now is the time to apply these lessons to emergency management. We can do this by integrating health promotion into emergency management plans and ensuring that communities are prioritised in all aspects of the planning cycle, from prevention to recovery. We must also put equity at the core of emergency management science, evidence, and technology.”
Conference watch
Public health
Read the MJA study. 
Read the article
Events upcoming
